CHAPTER 3: THE RISE OF THE KHMER ROUGE

In the year I was born in 1969, Vietnamese communists were increasingly seeking refuge in rural Cambodia along the eastern Cambodia-Vietnamese border. The U.S. secretly escalated its bombing campaign in Cambodia and used long range B-52 heavy bombers to blanket large areas along the Cambodia-Vietnamese borders, where suspected Vietnamese communists base camps and supply routes were hidden. According to John Pilger's documentary called Year Zero - The Silent Death of Cambodia: "No country had ever experienced more concentrated bombing than Cambodia where the United States unleashed more than 100,000 ton of bombs, the equivalent of 5 Hiroshima".The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, exploited the U.S. bombings as a means of propaganda to recruit and build up his tiny army from the dis-located and ordinary Cambodians. The following year in 1970, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was the Head of State of Cambodia at the time, was overthrown by Lon Nol, his army chief, with the aid of an American backed military coup. Under Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia had remained neutral throughout the Vietnam War and refused to allow the U.S. to fight in Cambodia against the Vietnamese communists. With the U.S. backed Lon Nol in power, the U.S. used Cambodia as a battleground against the Vietnamese communists.

​When the peace treaty, known as the Paris Peace Accords, was signed with the Vietnamese communists in 1973, the U.S. assumed the cease-fire would apply to Cambodia as well. In secret, Pol Pot broke with the Vietnamese communists and insisted on continuing to fight the Cambodia’s U.S. backed Lon Nol government. The Khmer Rouge established a new alliance with Prince Norodom Sihanouk who still had many ordinary Cambodian followers. The heavy U.S. bombing devastation and Lon Nol’s collaboration with the U.S., drove many ordinary Cambodians to join Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army. By 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forces had grown to over 100,000 fighters. On April 16, 1975, the U.S. Marines evacuated the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The next day at dawn on April 17, the city fell to the Khmer Rouge.

The rise of the Khmer Rouge has long been the subjects of contentious debates. It has been mostly argued that the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia contributed to the eventual rise of the Khmer Rouge. This is best summarized by Pulitzer Prize award winner, Sydney Schanberg, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage in Cambodia. His book entitled "The Death and Life of Dith Pran" inspired the 1984 film, The Killing Fields and he authored a recent article on crime of war. The most comprehensive coverage of Cambodia is that done by John Pilger, an Australian Journalist based in the United Kingdom. John Pilger's documentary called "Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia" uncovered the shocking state of Cambodia in the wake of the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. The documentary can be viewed on Youtube below.

Angelina Jolie's recent Cambodian genocide movie "First They Killed My Father" released on Netflix in September 2017. It is a powerful genocide movie that is told from the perspective of a five year old Cambodian child. I was a year older than the main character in the movie, Loung Ung, and went through similar ordeal. The movie trailer can be viewed here: First-They-Killed-My-Father

​Recent CNN coverage of the Khmer Rouge members as they face justice before a U.N.-backed trial in 2009 can be found from the link below:​